YNOT – Comcast has agreed to pay $16 million US dollars to settle a two year old class action lawsuit that claimed the company deceived its customers by throttling down its service for those who used P2P file-sharing networks. Comcast has not admitted any wrongdoing in settling the case.The original lawsuit was filed by Comcast subscriber Jon Hart in November of 2007. In the suit, Hart claimed that he signed up for Comcast’s “Performance Plus” package because the company advertised speeds of up to 12M bps for large downloads, and Hart planned to use the service to enhance his use of P2P file-sharing networks. Hart claimed that Comcast used special software to sever some P2P transfers and purposefully slowed his service speeds in contradiction with the company’s advertisements that promised no limitations.
“Defendants have disseminated and [still] disseminate advertising that they know or should have reasonably [known] is false and misleading,” the lawsuit stated. “This conduct includes, but is not limited to, promoting and advertising the fast speeds that apply to the service without limitation, when, in fact, defendants severely limit the speed of the service for certain applications.”
Shortly after Hart’s lawsuit was filed, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched its own investigation of the incident. In August of 2008, the FCC found that Comcast was guilty of net neutrality violations for manipulating its P2P traffic. The FCC ordered that Comcast be more transparent with its network policies, and Comcast has since placed a 250GB monthly cap for residential subscribers.
Comcast has admitted that it did in fact manipulate service speeds for P2P users, but claims it did so only to manage the efficiency of its network. The company also has appealed the FCC’s enforcement actions, claiming that it did not have the authority to impose them.
In the settlement agreement, Hart will receive $2,500 while all other plaintiffs of the class action suit will be capped at $16. Anyone who subscribed to Comcast between April 1, 2006 and December 31, 2008, and who also attempted to access Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FastTrack, or Gnutella during that same time span, has until August 14th, 2010 to file a claim to receive the $16 payout.
